Reading Mastery Signature Edition uses the highly explicit, systematic approach of Direct Instruction to accelerate reading and help students achieve a high rate of success. Three strands address Reading, Language Arts, and Literature through a common instructional design that helps students learn more efficiently.

A typical 30- to 45-minute Reading Mastery lesson includes seven to nine short activities that encompass multiple strands of content, such as phonemic awareness, letter–sound correspondence, sounding out words, word recog- nition, vocabulary, oral reading fluency, or comprehension.

Reading Mastery was found to have potentially positive effects on reading fluency and no discernible effects on comprehension for adolescent learners.

Reading Mastery Signature Edition is an efficacy-proven core comprehensive program. It gives teachers the flexibility to use reading, language arts, and literature together or separately, each strand can be targeted for use as an intervention program.

Reading Mastery is an accelerated program that aims to help beginning readers identify letter sounds, segment words into sounds, blend sounds into words, develop vocabulary, and begin to learn comprehension strategies.

Structured Literacy is a way of teaching reading and writing that uses explicit, systematic, sequential, cumulative, diagnostic instruction that is delivered to mastery. It is not a curriculum or a program, but a systematic approach that is based on years of research.